


First one Thing, Then the Otter

by Alex51324



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-24
Updated: 2011-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:13:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex51324/pseuds/Alex51324
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the guys find signs of a sea otter living in a Chicago pond, Fraser is strangely reluctant to investigate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First one Thing, Then the Otter

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2008 Due South Match, Team Whimsy.  
> Prompt: “Look at it this way--if we don’t, we’re toast.”

A few feet away from the corpse, there was a strange sort of mark on the edge of the pond. Sort of a wet, muddy…track type thing. Ray crouched down to look at it. Almost like the body had been in the water and then it got dragged out, except the body didn’t look like a floater. “Fraser, come look at this.”

Fraser came over. “At what, Ray?”

“This…thing.” He gestured at it. Too small to be left by the body. Maybe a leg, or something.

Fraser looked at it, a funny expression on his face. “Ah. I think you’ll find that’s unrelated to the, ah, the homicide.”

“How do you know? What is it?”

“It looks like an otter-slide.”

“Huh?”

“Otters enjoy sliding down banks--riverbanks, pond banks, any kind of bank, really--on their bellies,” Fraser explained. “The activity leaves a characteristic impression in the mud. This one is, ah, is probably a few days older than the remains.”

That _would_ be the kind of thing Fraser knew about. Ray stood up, his knees creaking slightly. “I didn’t know we had otters around here,” he said, more to avoid going back over to where the body was than because he cared whether or not they had otters.

Fraser looked flummoxed by that for a second. “I doubt they’re common in the city, but…. Well, there could be one. Or two. This looks like the sort of place an otter might enjoy, if one found himself in an urban environment.”

“What, like they got out of the zoo or something?”

“Something like that,” Fraser agreed, sliding his eyes off to one side and tugging at his collar, like there was something embarrassing about the idea of a zoo.

Ray put otters out of his mind, but after working the case all day and getting nowhere, he turned his mind back to the otter-slide. Fraser seemed pretty sure, and he did know a lot about wildlife, but Ray wasn’t willing to buy that there were wild otters in the middle of the city.

Decisively, he picked up the phone and dialed the zoo. “Yeah, this is Detective Vecchio, Chicago PD. I need to talk to somebody who knows about otters.”

#

The next morning, he and Fraser met the zoo’s weasel keeper at the crime scene. “Good morning, detective,” she said, giving Fraser a strange look.

“Morning. This is Fraser, he works with me. He’s Canadian. Fraser, this is Molly Sanders. She’s an otter expert.”

Fraser cleared his throat. “I first came to Chicago--”

“Fraser, stow it.” The lady zookeeper looked like just Fraser’s type--petite, brunette, outdoorsy, competent--and he was doing all of his nervous things, shuffling around and pulling at his collar. Ray figured they’d better keep this businesslike. “It’s right over here. The crime scene team’s pretty much done, but stay on the boards anyway.”

She nodded, and they started toward the pond. “I have to say, it’s very unlikely that the tracks were left by an otter. They’re an endangered species in the state, with less than 100 individuals at last count. There’s a reintroduction program underway, but with so much prime habitat available in the southern part of the state, they’d have no reason to venture into the city.”

“Fraser thought maybe it escaped from the zoo or something.”

She shook her head. “Not possible. We haven’t lost any. I suppose it may have escaped from a private collection, but I haven’t heard of anything like that, and they’re fairly difficult to keep in captivity without the resources of a zoo. And I doubt that--” She stopped talking, because they’d gotten to the pond. The little flags were still there, showing where the body was, the bottle, the blood spatter. But the zookeeper ignored all that and went to the bank. “It really does look like an otter slide.”

Fraser tugged at his collar again. “Now that I look at it again, I’m not so sure,” he said, in that stiff I’m totally lying and I think it won’t count if it’s not convincing way of his. “It could be--something else.”

“I don’t think so.” Still crouching over, the zookeeper backed away from the bank, scanning the ground. “Look, here are some tracks.” She sat back on her heels. “That’s…strange.”

“What?”

“I’m sure it has nothing to do with the murder,” Fraser said quickly.

“Probably not,” Dr. Sanders agreed. “But these tracks were left by a sea otter. You can tell because the outside toe on each hind paw is longer than the others, see?”

Ray looked down at the paw print. “Yeah. The other kind of otter is different?”

“River otters, yes. Their paws are more rounded. A river otter in the middle of Chicago would be unusual; a sea otter is practically impossible.”

Ray looked over at Fraser. “What do you think? Could it be related to the murder somehow?”

“I don’t see how. The otter was here several days before the killing. If it was an otter.”

“It was an otter,” Molly answered. “I’m sure of it. This isn’t a safe environment for it--I’ll have to put out a trap.”

“No!” Fraser said quickly. They both turned to look at him, and he cracked his neck and straightened his lanyard. “I mean, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“A _live_ trap,” Molly explained. “If it’s healthy, we’ll try to introduce it into our group at the zoo, or find a place for it at another zoo or aquarium that has adequate facilities. It’s what’s best for the otter, really. They don’t belong here.”

Ray would have thought that Fraser would be all over that plan, but he still looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think…that is, I’d rather…well, I suppose you know best. But it doesn’t seem to have been here for a few days,” Fraser added. “You might be wasting your time.”

Molly nodded. “I’ll have to try to organize a team--volunteers, perhaps--to check other water sources for signs of otter activity, but it makes sense to start here. The sooner we can capture the otter, the better.”

Ray nodded. Even if Fraser was against it for some reason, he thought catching the otter was a good idea--it was a dangerous city for an otter on its own. “Yeah, Frase, it could get hit by a car, or eat something poisonous, or--I dunno. I bet it’ll be happier in the zoo.” He turned back to Molly. “If it is involved with the murder somehow--any ideas? What would criminals want with an otter?”

“They used to be hunted for their fur, and there is still some poaching going on,” Molly mused, “but if it’s just one otter, I don’t see how it could be connected to the illegal fur trade--and it does look like only one. A single pelt might be worth a few thousand dollars, but the person would have to know how to sell it.”

“And a person that well connected isn’t too likely to kill for that kind of money,” Ray agreed. “Okay, we’ll put the otter angle on the back burner,” he decided. “Thanks for coming out.”

Fraser hesitated before adding his thanks. Ray waited until they were back in the car and the zookeeper was back in hers before turning to Fraser and asking, “What’s that about? I thought you’d be all over getting the otter to a good home in the zoo, and there she was asking for volunteers and you stand there like a doorpost?”

Fraser looked out the window on his side. “I’m sure I’ll have enough to do with my own duties without helping the zoo catch an otter.”

“Yeah, and you have enough to do without helping little old ladies cross the street, and visiting sick people, and all the other do-gooder stuff you do. It just seems like the otter thing would be right up your street.” Ray considered. “What, you don’t like zoos?” That wasn’t it; he knew Fraser went to the zoo sometimes. “We could talk to her again, see if maybe there’s a way she can reintroduce the little guy back to the wild once she’d caught him.”

“I--I just don’t think the otter requires our help, Ray.” That wasn’t true--Fraser was a lousy liar--but before Ray could call him on it, he said, “Weren’t we going to talk to Griffen’s widow this morning?”

It was an obvious attempt at distracting him, but Ray decided to go with it. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that.”

#

The spent the rest of the day working the non-otter angles. Griffen’s widow and associates--his co workers, his neighbors, his poker buddies--had no idea why anyone would want to kill him. Several of them said it had to have been some random psychopath. Ray wasn’t ruling that out, but his experience told him that there were a lot fewer random psychopaths out there than grieving friends and family members tended to think. Fraser decided to head back to the Consulate at six, but Ray stuck around a few more hours, going through everything they had, hoping he’d think of something that would at least give them somewhere to go tomorrow.

Ray wasn’t sure why he decided to swing by the crime scene on his way home. It wasn’t like he thought some brilliant insight would come to him and he’d be able to call up Fraser all, “Aha! The killer was a one-legged man wearing old shoes who had recently eaten cabbage.” It was just--dunno. He felt like stopping by.

He found a flashlight in the trunk, so he wouldn’t go around stepping on evidence flags or falling in the pond, and hiked to the bank.

Where he saw a whole lotta nothing, except cold fog sitting on top of the pond, and a nearly-full moon reflecting off of it. He was about to give up and go home when something chirped. Sort of like a squirrel, only less…more…less squirrelly.

Shining the flashlight around, he saw that Molly the zookeeper was a fast worker. She had already set up the live trap, and there was even an otter in it. When Ray shined the light on it, it started wiggling and chirping louder. “It’s okay, little guy,” Ray said. “You’re just going to the zoo. They’ll have other otters for you to play with.”

The otter didn’t seem comforted. Ray knew he ought to just go home--let Molly deal with it in the morning. She was the otter expert, and hanging out in the cage all night wasn’t going to do the otter any harm. But he felt…guilty.

Probably it was all Fraser’s fault. For whatever reason, Fraser didn’t want the otter trapped. Maybe he had some other plan for it, or maybe he thought the otter should be free to make up its own mind, like Dief. Which was just dumb. Dief, okay, Dief was special; Ray could almost buy that the wolf had made some kind of informed decision to come to Chicago with Fraser instead of doing wolf stuff up in the Northwest Areas. But the otter was just an otter.

Ray already knew he was going to lose when he started arguing with himself. Fraser wasn’t even there . If Ray didn’t tell him he’d stopped by and seen the otter before Molly did, he’d never know. Any anyway, the otter would be safer in the zoo.

But none of that mattered, ‘cause Fraser didn’t want the otter trapped. With a sigh, Ray took out his phone. He’d tell Fraser the otter was there, and then go home. What Fraser did next was up to him.

Only--naturally--Fraser didn’t answer. After listening to the bilingual answering machine message, Ray said, “Frase, if you’re there, pick up.” He waited a moment. “Damn. Listen, I’m at the crime scene, and your furry friend is here. Whaddya want me to do with him?” Since he was talking to a tape, there was no answer. “Okay. Shit. Okay, I’ll take him to my place,” he decided. “But you’d better call or come over as soon as you get this and do something with it.” He folded up the phone and looked down at the otter. “Guess you’re coming with me, buddy.”

The trap was like a little cage, with a wire handle on the top. Ray was halfway afraid the otter would find a way to bite him when he picked it up--the handle put his knuckles closer to the otter than he really wanted--but it just braced its little feet against the bottom of the cage and hunkered there while Ray carried it and the trap to the car.

But there was another problem--the otter was heavy, and the wire handle cut into his hand. He was glad when he got to the car and could put the trap down for a minute.

He shrugged out of his coat and spread it out on the backseat. If the otter was going to pee or be carsick on something, at least the coat could be dry cleaned. “Okay, buddy, you’ve probably never been in a car before. Just relax, don’t freak out, and it’ll be over soon.”

The otter chirped back at him. It kept making noise the whole way back to Ray’s apartment--mostly the chirping, but with some squeals and grunts thrown in, and once even something that sounded like a bark. Ray had the strangest feeling that it was complaining about his driving.

At home, he put the otter trap to one side and tried to get on with his evening--he put something on the stereo, opened a beer, looked in the refrigerator. But the whole time, the otter cheeped, chirped, and pushed against the opening to the trap with its nose and paws. Otters were way more trouble than turtles, or even wolves, Ray decided.

Poor little guy. The trap was barely big enough for him to turn around, and he couldn’t be comfortable in there. “Why don’t you take a nap,” Ray suggested. “I’ll wake you up when Fraser calls.”

The otter didn’t take his advice. It kept chirping and rattling the cage the whole time that Ray was washing the dishes and trying to think of something to fix for dinner.

Finally, it occurred to him that the otter might be thirsty. He filled a small bowl with water and examined the opening to the cage, figuring out how to open it. “Okay, back up, buddy. I’m just going to slide this in there….” He eased the trap door open just enough to get the bowl inside. “Nice drink for you, just a seco--shit!” Somehow, the otter squeezed through the narrow opening and out of the cage.

Ray would have thought that a wild animal would panic when it found itself in an apartment, but the otter seemed to be enjoying the game as Ray chased it around and around, never getting within arm’s reach of the otter. If he stopped moving, the otter would stop too, and watch him, grooming the fur on its belly, until he resumed the chase.

Ray wasn’t sure how long he chased the otter before giving up. Clearly, he’d have to use his superior intelligence to recapture the otter. He quickly settled on the trap as the best way to do it--the otter had already gone in there once; all he should have to do was put in the right bait, and it would go in again.

But what was the right bait? It was too bad he hadn’t asked Molly or Fraser what otters ate. But if it was a sea otter, it stood to reason it would like sea food. He knew he didn’t have anything like that, but he checked the cupboards anyway.

The closest thing he had was a can of clam chowder, which he didn’t think would quite do it. He called his favorite Chinese restaurant and ordered some lo mein and kung pao chicken for himself, then asked, “What do you have with shellfish in it?”

“We have mussel in garlic sauce.”

“Perfect. I’ll take an order of those.”

Worn out from his bout of otter chasing on top of a hard day’s police work, Ray sat down in front of the TV to wait for the delivery of his dinner and otter-bait. He watched Law and Order--funny how those cops never had to deal with otters--while the otter chattered and watched him.

“Stay away from the turtle,” he warned the otter. “It’s not for eating.”

It may have been his imagination, but the otter looked offended by the suggestion.

The TV cops had just arrested the wrong guy--he knew it was the wrong guy because the show was less than half over--when he simultaneously heard a series of thumps from the bathroom and noticed that the otter was nowhere in sight.

“Shit!” Fearing the worst, he hurried to the bathroom to see what his furry guest was up to.

He walked in on the otter sliding across the bottom of the tub. When it hit the side, it went head-over-tail, then picked itself up and climbed up onto the edge to launch itself down the sloping side again.

“Are you having fun?”

The otter chirped, slid, and stood up on its hind legs to examine its reflection in the shiny silver spout.

Ray remembered that this whole adventure had started because he thought the otter might be thirsty. He might as well give it a drink before he got it back in the trap.

The otter retreated to the far end of the tub when Ray reached for the tap, but when Ray stepped back, it scampered back to the faucet to splash around in the water.

Ray leaned against the doorframe and watched. The otter was a funny little guy. Talky, too--he kept looking over his shoulder at Ray and chirping away. “You’re a pain in the neck,” Ray reminded him, just in case the otter was getting too cocky.

When the food came, Ray carefully made a trail of mussels from the bathroom back to the cage, so that the otter could munch his way back into the trap, and took his own dinner to the couch. Figuring that if he watched, the otter would be put on his guard, he carefully concentrated on the TV and ignored the otter, the trap, and the shellfish.

After about fifteen minutes of expecting to hear the trap snap closed at any moment, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He looked toward the bathroom--just in time to see the otter snatch a mussel from the trail and run back to the bathroom with it.

Ray followed, noticing that the mussel trail was about half gone. In the bathroom, the otter was floating on its back in the tub, holding the mussel to its face with both front paws. The tub was about half full--the otter must have accidentally pushed the lever to close the drain while he was playing with the water. “You doofus, didn’t anyone tell you to wait half an hour after you eat before you go swimming?”

The otter licked the last bit of sauce from the mussel shell, tossed it aside, and started grooming its whiskers. The mussel shell slowly sank to the bottom of the tub, where the other ones already were.

“Great. That’s just great. Bathtub full of seashells. I love that.” He stomped back to the couch and went back to ignoring the otter.

By the time the late show was ending, every mussel except the one inside the trap was gone. Ray went quietly back to the bathroom, where the water was going out the overflow drain as fast as it came out of the faucet, and the otter was asleep, still floating on its back in the tub.

Ray scratched the back of his head. His cunning plan hadn’t worked, but on the other hand, the otter looked down for the count. For about a second, he thought about picking up the otter and stuffing it in the cage, but he decided it would probably wake up and bite him or, worse, escape and leave him chasing it all over the apartment again while he was supposed to be asleep.

On the other hand, if he otter-proofed the bathroom and shut the door, everything should be all right for the night. He already had a major cleanup job to tackle before the next time he felt like using his tub, so how much worse could it get? Maybe he’d just plan on showering at the station for a while.

He moved his razor and hair gel to the medicine cabinet, tied the handles to the under-sink cabinet together, and called it a day.

#

He was cold, and rather damp, and something unpleasantly sharp was digging into his buttocks. Fraser wasn’t exactly surprised by any of these developments, nor by his surroundings, but it took him a few moments to put together exactly how he’d come to be where he was, in the state that he was in.

Knowing that it was necessary to examine the crime scene with his more acute senses, he’d managed to convince himself that he’d remember the danger well enough to avoid capture. Clearly, he hadn’t. As much as Fraser tried to maintain a clear head, at times he could be dangerously impulsive. Particularly when there was fish involved.

It was down to pure luck that he was waking up now, in Ray’s bathtub, rather than behind bars at the zoo. Despite that stroke of luck, he still had several problems. He dealt with the first and most immediately pressing one by climbing out of the tub and picking the shell fragments out of his rear end. Sure that Ray wouldn’t object if he borrowed a towel, he dried off, wrapping the towel around his hips when he’d finished.

That was a bit of an improvement, but he could hardly walk on the public street in just a towel. A towel and his hat, he could perhaps brazen out, but his hat was at the Consulate with the rest of his clothing.

But surely Ray wouldn’t mind lending him something more substantial to wear. Making sure the towel was secure, he crept out of the bathroom and into Ray’s bedroom. He was not, he told himself, sneaking. It was simply that it would be unkind to wake Ray before his normal rising hour, particularly when he had a busy day ahead of him.

He had just eased open a drawer--first from the top, where most people kept their underwear--when Ray said, “Fraser?”

Fraser clutched his towel and turned. Ray was craning his neck in what looked like a most uncomfortable way to look at him, his hair in a charming state of thistly disarray. “Good morning, Ray,” Fraser said evenly. “Go back to sleep; it’s early yet.”

For a moment, he thought Ray had, indeed, gone back to sleep--until the bedside lamp clicked on. “Wha’re you are doin’ in my room inna towel?” he asked blearily.

Fraser had neglected to prepare a reasonable explanation for his actions--perhaps because there was no reasonable explanation. “Borrowing some clothes,” he answered, falling back on the literal. “If you don’t mind.”

“G’head.” Fraser quickly selected some underwear and a shirt, and was looking for a pair of trousers that might fit when Ray continued, “Why’re you borrowing my clothes?”

“Because I don’t wish to return to the Consulate naked.” That was only a partial truth--he frequently returned to the Consulate in a state of undress after a night as an otter. They key difference was that on all previous occasions, he had remained an otter until reaching the safety of his office, where his clothes were.

Ray muttered something about giving the Ice Queen an eyeful, which Fraser chose to ignore. Finding some sweat pants that he knew were baggy on Ray, Fraser held up the bundle of clothing. “I’ll just get changed, and then I’ll be out of your hair,” he said, and retreated to the bathroom.

He’d just reached it when he heard Ray coming up behind him. “Fraser, wait! You can’t go in there--there’s an--”

Fraser had just opened the bathroom door. Ray squeezed in next to him--delightful, if anxiety-producing, with Ray dressed only in boxer shorts and him in a towel--and finished, “otter,” pulling the door shut.

Fraser had hoped to escape the apartment before Ray noticed that the otter was missing, but clearly, that ship had sailed. That being the case, and with Ray mere inches away, covering his nakedness took on increased urgency. “Ah. In that case, I’ll just--” He darted back into Ray’s bedroom and shut the door.

Dressing gave him a moment to think. “Otter? What otter?” Seemed to be the best response to the questions Ray was sure to begin asking any moment. Perhaps Ray would be sufficiently distracted by the otter’s disappearance that he’d forget to ask what Fraser was doing in his apartment with nothing on.

Dressed, he checked the floor of Ray’s closet for shoes that might fit. The only thing he found was a pair of bedroom slippers--they looked as if they had never been worn. Not ideal, but at least they’d attract less attention than walking home barefoot, as well as providing some protection from hazards on the sidewalk.

He had just put the slippers on when Ray knocked on his own bedroom door. “Fraser? The otter’s gone!”

Fraser opened the door. “What otter?”

Ray pushed past him and started tearing open drawers and flinging out articles of clothing. “The otter I had in my bathroom.”

“Ray, did you perhaps dream--”

“No! No, the shells and the trap are still there. I got it at the pond last night--didn’t you get my messages?”

Fraser, of course, had been with Ray when he left them, but was able to truthfully answer, “No.”

“I found the otter in that zoo lady’s trap,” Ray explained, pulling a t-shirt over his head. “And I brought it here.”

“Why?” Last night, it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder why. Otters tended to take things as they came.

“You said you didn’t want it trapped.”

“Yes,” Fraser admitted.

“So I brought it here.” Ray sat on the edge of the bed to pull on some jeans. “But now I lost it.”

“Perhaps it went out the window,” Fraser suggested. As an otter, he frequently used windows to get in and out of buildings.

“My bathroom doesn’t have a window.” Ray stopped in the act of putting on a sock. “My bathroom doesn’t have a window,” he repeated.

“Yes?”

“So the otter can’t have gotten out.”

“Perhaps it’s still in there.” Fraser knew perfectly well it wasn’t.

“I checked everywhere.” Ray leaned back on his hands. “Shit. That means--somebody must have stolen the otter!”

Oh, dear. “That seems unlikely,” Fraser offered.

“No, they have to have.” Ray jumped up and headed for the front door, saying, “Poor little guy--who know what they’re doing to him?” Without waiting for a response, he yanked open the door and examined the lock and doorjamb. “Doesn’t look like this was picked, or forced.” He shut the door and locked it, then crossed to the window. “Can’t have come in through the bedroom; I was in there. But out here, they’d have had to climb over the turtle tank. At least they didn’t knock it over or anything,” he added, looking at the turtle. “Too bad he can’t give us a description, huh?” Ray ran his hands over the window frame. “They must have wanted the otter bad. _Why_? What the hell is so damn special about this otter?”

“Ray.” Fraser had no idea what he was going to say, but he couldn’t let Ray go on following a false trail.

Ray whirled away from the window. “What?”

“The otter,” Fraser stumbled. “No one stole the otter. Believe me, the otter has nothing to do with this case.”

“You can’t know that.” Ray shook his head.

“I can. I do.”

“How? And if no one stole it, where’s the damn otter?”

On the cusp of saying, _here_ , Fraser stopped himself and said, “Nowhere.”

“There was an otter, Fraser. I’m not crazy.”

“You’re not crazy,” Fraser agreed.

“Don’t humor me!”

“I’m not. Ray, I….” Dropping his head, he rubbed at his eyebrow--a habit that he strongly suspected was connected to the grooming behavior he engaged in as an otter. There was no way out of it--unless there was, but he wasn’t seeing one because he wanted to very badly to tell Ray the truth. He took a deep breath and said, “It was me.”

“You took it? Does it have something to do with where your clothes went?”

Fraser almost let the misunderstanding stand--but not, then he’d have to devise a reason, a story about his clothes, an explanation for the whereabouts of the otter. “No. No, I mean I--I was the otter.” It sounded as ridiculous as he’d thought it would.

Ray stared at him. “Fraser, that’s, uh--” He ducked his head and ran a hand through his hair. “Have you been crazy long?”

“For about three years, quite possibly,” Fraser admitted. “But I’ve been a were-otter for more than twenty-five.”

“A were-otter.” Ray turned away, mussing his hair some more and muttering something about Mounties and nothing in his life being normal. When he turned back to Fraser, he was on the balls of his feet, projecting a terrier-like attitude of imminent belligerence. “Prove it.”

“Prove--”

“Do it. Turn into an otter.”

Ray, Fraser reminded himself, had already seen him as an otter. It wasn’t as if there would be anything particularly risky about doing it again. “I’ll have to, ah, disrobe.”

“Fine. Dis _robe_.”

After a moment, Fraser nodded and took himself to the bathroom. He shucked his borrowed clothing, folded it, and placed the pile on the toilet lid. He really had made a mess in Ray’s bathtub--he’d have to clean it up later.

Wrapping the towel around his waist, he went back to the living room. Ray wavered when he saw him, dripping his eyes for a moment. But after that he put his chin up and said, “Any time.”

Fraser nodded. “I’m told the process is disquieting to watch,” he warned Ray.

“I guess you’re not hiding an otter under there,” Ray admitted, gesturing in the general direction of Fraser’s towel. “I’ll just, um--” He waved his hand again and turned away, only to turn back a second later. “Does it hurt?” he blurted out. Fraser could see that he was considering for the first time that Fraser might be telling the truth.

“No. It’s--strange, but not unpleasant.”

Ray nodded. “Okay. Okay, show me.”

Fraser nodded back, took a deep breath, and changed.

The sensation started at his extremities and moved inward, a sort of melting--but, as he’d told Ray, not unpleasant. It was like--not really like, but metaphorically like--the bonelessness that came from a really good massage, or sexual arousal--or both at once.

When it ended, the world looked very different. Taller, for one thing. There was the usual moment’s disorientation as he tried to fit human thoughts into an otter’s brain, then human thoughts sank away. He padded over to the turtle tank, sniffing deeply at the scents of water and algae and maybe-food.

“Hey! No eating the turtle!” Ray loomed over him and--hey!--picked him up. Fraser scolded him, chirping eagerly. “Oof, you’re heavy.” Ray slung Fraser over his shoulder and took him to the sofa. Fraser scrambled up him, provoking a yelp of “Ow! Watch the claws!”

Fraser chirped and prowled along the back of the sofa, returning to groom the top of Ray’s head.

Ray twisted around and stroked under Fraser’s chin with one finger. “Wow. That’s really you, huh?”

Fraser chirruped agreement and reached for another strand of Ray’s hair.

“What are you doing? God, you’re weird.” He patted the cushion next to himself, and Fraser obligingly climbed down. “Okay, can you, uh….”

Since Fraser was an otter--an unusually bright otter, but still, an otter--it took him a moment to figure out what Ray wanted. Being an otter, he also didn’t think to get his towel before he changed. Instead, he melted, and then found himself, human and slightly dazed, sitting naked on the couch with Ray.

“Wow,” Ray said. “I mean--wow. That’s really--wow.”

“Yes,” Fraser agreed. “I’ll just, ah, get my--” He scooted off of the couch and snatched up his towel, wrapping it around his hips.

“Good idea,” Ray said after a moment. “I’ll make coffee while you--” He flapped a hand in the air.

“Understood.” He dressed, reflecting that his brief period as an otter hadn’t been as embarrassing as it could have been. He hadn’t, for instance, defecated on the carpet. Or made carnal overtures to Ray’s leg. Diefenbaker never would let him forget a certain indiscretion he’d made in that line, and he was sure Ray would be no different.

When he came out of the bathroom, Ray handed him a cup of coffee. “Do you want a pop tart or something?”

“No, thank you kindly. I, er, had a late supper.”

Ray smiled. “Mussels.”

“They were delicious.”

“Not delicious enough to get you back in the trap,” Ray pointed out, giving that object a dark glance.

“It’s difficult to get any animal to go into one of those more than once.” He shook his head. “I’m surprised I fell for it the first time, considering I knew it would be there.” He hesitated, then added, “Sardines in tomato sauce. I have a terrible weakness for them, when I’m an otter.”

#

Driving to the Consulate, Ray kept stealing glances at Fraser. He’d thought _Fraser_ was weird for having a wolf. Now he had an otter for a partner. A part-time otter.

Not that he exactly Fraser. Not in the sense that he wanted to, and that he sometimes thought Fraser wanted too. The way that they’d once--he was sure of it--been about to have each other.

They had been on their way into his apartment, and for some reason, they had both stopped on the landing at the top of the stairs, and just looked at each other, not speaking, not even breathing, but with perfect understanding. Fraser had reached out to him and tugged at the collar of his jacket, then squeezed his shoulder, still looking at him in that knowing way.

When Ray had finally managed to pull himself out of Fraser’s eyes, he jerked his head at the door to his apartment. “You wanna, ah, go in?”

Fraser had swallowed hard and said, “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

And he’d fled, almost like Ray was Frannie or something. But the next day, they had acted liked nothing had happened. And that was that.

Ray knew--he just knew--that it wasn’t a matter of Fraser being too straight, or even of Fraser not digging him the way he dug Fraser. It was something else.

Maybe something to do with this otter thing, although Ray wasn’t quite sure how.

They got to the Consulate, and Fraser started circling around to the back. Ray was confused for a second, until he realized that an otter wouldn’t exactly have anywhere to carry keys.

The small window to Fraser’s office had been left open about six inches--not normally the smartest thing, in the middle of the city, but Ray could see Dief inside, so maybe burglary wasn’t likely to be a problem. Fraser climbed up on a crate and opened the window the rest of the way. Once he was inside, he held out his hand to help Ray in.

Dief nosed his way over to them and barked. “Yes, I know,” Fraser answered. “There was a--change of plans.”

Even Ray thought the wolf’s tone was a little pissy as he whined and went back to the dog bed in one corner. “Well it wasn’t intentional,” Fraser said, getting pissy right back. “And you don’t even like shellfish,” he added, opening the closet door.

“I’ll just, uh, hallway,” Ray suggested. He’d already gotten one eyeful of Fraser today--two if you counted the towel thing--and he wasn’t sure he could handle another one, at least not right away, without bursting into flames.

Being in the hall, knowing that he was only a couple of feet and a cheap hollow-core door away from Fraser getting dressed wasn’t much better. He tried to remember the times tables, and had gotten as far as the sixes when Fraser came out, in full uniform, with his hat in his hand.

“Thank you for the clothes, Ray. I’ll launder them and get them back to you soon.”

“No problem. Uh, take your time. I mean, it’s no hurry or anything.”

Fraser looked at him for a moment. “Understood,” he said, that way he did--like you’d just said something more important than what you thought you said.

They went back to the car, using the door this time. “So about this, you know, otter thing.”

“Yes, Ray?” Fraser asked, buckling his seat belt.

 _Does it have anything to do with why you won’t kiss me?_ “Uh, does it run in your family?” Stupid, Ray, very stupid. Who ever heard of were-otterism running in someone’s family?

On the other hand, who ever heard of were-otterism, period?

“No,” Fraser answered. “No, I….” He stopped, rubbing absently at his chest, a spot right below where his belt crossed his shoulder. “I was struck with an otter. A dead otter. I was ten.”

“You get to be a were-otter from being hit with an otter?” Granted, Ray wasn’t an expert on this kind of thing, but that sounded pretty unlikely.

“Well, specifically, the otter’s teeth. The condition is transmitted by saliva. Evidently.”

Ray was trying to figure out exactly how something like that would happen, when something fell into place in the back of his head. “Saliva. That’s why--”

“Yes.” Fraser looked down at his lap. “That’s why. I couldn’t risk transmitting the condition. Again.”

“Ag--Victoria.” The whole Victoria mess had taken up almost half of the dossier he’d gotten from the original Ray Vecchio--the actual case file itself was very thin, but there were pages and pages of speculations and warnings. _If she turns up again, watch out_ , had been the gist of it. _She has some kind of weird hold on him._

Now Ray knew exactly what kind of weird hold it was. Shit, on top of the guilt he had to be carrying over turning her into a were-otter and sending her to prison, she was probably the only person he knew who understood what it was like, being an otter. He wanted to move on to what this piece of news meant for them, but Fraser clearly had other ideas.

“I didn’t know what would happen,” Fraser was saying. “I knew what I was, of course, but I didn’t know if I could pass the condition to another person. But I knew she wouldn’t survive. Nothing human could, in a storm like that. She’d lost--she’d lost one of her gloves, and her hand was bleeding, from where she’d put it on the ice. I put her fingers in my mouth, and when the moon came out….” He shook his head. “She’d have died, otherwise. I would have too; I wouldn’t have changed and left her alone. I showed her how to comb her fur to incorporate a layer of air--air is very insulating--and we burrowed into the snow. We survived.” He turned his hat over in his hands. “She thought I’d let her go, because of what we’d shared. Or perhaps because she could have told, although I think we both knew it was unlikely she’d be believed, and if she was, the consequences would be as serious for her as they would for me. But I couldn’t. Let her go, I mean.”

“Well, yeah, of course not,” Ray agreed. He’d thought--Vecchio had thought--that Fraser and Victoria had had sex. Which maybe they had--Fraser wasn’t saying they hadn’t--but the otter thing was way more intimate.

But, wait. Victoria had been in prison. Prison guards were mostly guys too dumb to pass the police academy tests, but you didn’t have to be too smart to notice somebody turning into an otter. “How come nobody figured it out, while she was in jail?”

Fraser shook his head. “I’m not sure. The impulse to change is--resistible, particularly if one isn’t exposed to the moonlight. And she was in solitary confinement quite a bit, so it’s possible she was able to change sometimes without being observed.” He got quiet for a minute--even Dief noticed, and put his head between the front seats, whining. Fraser ruffled his ears and said, “I’ve often wondered what it was like for her, there. As an otter. It wouldn’t be--pleasant. Anyway--” He returned to the subject of most interest to Ray, “I couldn’t cause anyone else that sort of difficulty.”

“I’m not going to prison,” Ray pointed out.

“I know. I was referring to the--ah--were-otterism.”

“Well, yeah, but if you’re not in jail, what’s so bad about it? What do you do when you’re an otter?” He figured it wasn’t “run around on the moors killing people,” or Fraser would have turned himself in years ago.

“Mostly I gambol.”

“Gamble?”

“No, gambol. Frolic. Play.”

“Well, that sounds okay.” Maybe that was why Fraser was so serious as a human--he did all of his playing when he was an otter.

“It’s a bit lonely. Otters are very social.” Dief whined again, and Fraser added, “It’s not particularly safe for two non-native wild animals to roam the city on their own.”

“So that’s why Dief had to stay home while you were ottering it up last night?”

“I was investigating the crime scene,” Fraser said stiffly.

Ray let himself be distracted. “Did you find out anything interesting?”

“The killer was a woman. Not Griffen’s wife.”

“How do you know that?”

“Scent,” Fraser answered. “He was killed there--which we already knew, from the post-mortem. He and the killer were there for some time before the murder took place.”

Ray tried not to think too much about the fact that they were talking about evidence Fraser found by smelling the crime scene as an otter. “An affair, you think?”

“It seems likely,” Fraser agreed.

“Then let’s talk to the wife again.”

#

Laura Griffen sniffled into a Kleenex. “Maybe,” she admitted. “We have--had--separate social lives. He had his poker night, and he’d watch sports with his friends. But, ah, sometimes he’d call and say he drank too much and he was staying over at his friend’s house.”

Fraser wasn’t entirely sure why that was suspicious, but Ray winced. “Yeah, that’s…most guys don’t do that.”

The widow nodded. “I thought…either he’s having an affair, or he has a drinking problem. I tried not to think about it.”

“Do you have any ideas about who it might have been?”

She shook her head. “Roger--his best friend--might know. I never asked. I didn’t want to know.”

Ray wrapped up the interview, and they took their leave. “If I didn’t know better,” Ray said as they got into the car, “I’d wonder if it was best-friend-Roger he was having the affair with.”

“I can’t rule that out,” Fraser answered, “but the killer was definitely a woman.”

“Huh. Well, let’s go see what Roger has to say.” Ray started driving. “So do you always investigate crime scenes as an otter?”

“Not always.” Fraser was glad that Ray seemed to be taking the news that his partner was an otter fairly well. “It gives me a different perspective on the evidence, but it’s hard to remember what I saw--and smelled--once I’m human again.”

“I guess that explains the licking, at least,” Ray mused.

“No, that’s a perfectly ordinary tracking technique.”

“Standard procedure, huh?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Diefenbaker stood up on the back seat and licked Ray’s ear. “Hey, watch it! I’m trying to drive here.”

After giving Ray’s ear a final lick, Dief curled up on the backseat with his nose on his flank.

“So, you ever wish you, you know, had another otter to play with?” Ray asked, his tone almost suspiciously casual.

“It would be nice,” Fraser answered. “But other otters tend to notice that there’s something, er, different about me.”

“Well, yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking. That you needed another were-otter. To, you know. Do otter stuff with. And human stuff.”

Fraser allowed himself to think about that for a moment. “It would be nice,” he agreed. “But I don’t know any other were-otters. Apart from Victoria. It seems to be an unusual condition.”

“Well, yeah.” Ray wriggled in the driver’s seat for several long moments, occasionally pounding the steering wheel with one palm. Finally he said, “So you said, uh, saliva. So you can’t, you know, be with anybody? Unless they don’t mind being a were-otter.”

“Yes. Ordinary kissing seems fairly safe, but if the, ah, other party happened to have a cut lip, or anything along those lines….”

“Yeah. Yeah, I get that.” More wriggling, until Ray said, “So you don’t figure that somebody who was, you know, really into you would be okay with the otter thing?”

Fraser had, in fact, never considered that possibility. Considering it now, he concluded, “I couldn’t ask that of someone I, er, cared for. Deeply.”

“It doesn’t sound that bad, really. Being an otter. With, you know, the shellfish and the frolicking. I mean, I like frolicking as much as the next guy. For example. And seafood’s good. I, uh, like seafood.”

Telling himself firmly that Ray wasn’t saying what he seemed to be saying, Fraser said, “There’s more to being an otter than frolicking and seafood.”

“Like what?”

Fraser thought about it. “Swimming.”

“I can swim. Sort of.”

“Yes,” Fraser agreed. He had a momentary vision of how Ray would look as an otter, sleek and blond, with laughing eyes and a small pink tongue, perhaps peering over his shoulder at Fraser, challenging him to try some daring trick. He moistened his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. _Oh, Ray._

“So, you know. I could--I mean, we could--”

He was saying what he seemed to be saying. “I can’t, Ray. I couldn’t ask you to--”

“You’re not asking, are you?”

Fraser was tempted--was he ever tempted--but he just shook his head.

#

They found the dead guy’s best friend--Roger Barone--at his office. His secretary told them he had a busy day of moving papers around --or whatever it was business guys did all day--planned, but when Fraser insisted she tell him they were there, he seemed happy enough to stop doing it for a while and talk to them.

“Do you want some coffee? Bottled water?” he asked, showing them to some chairs in front of his desk.

“No, thanks,” Ray answered for both of them.

“I take it this is about Bill?”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “We’re looking at the possibility that the deceased may have been having an affair.”

Barone looked startled. “You think it was--I told Bill she was crazy, but--” He put his hand to his forehead. “If I hadn’t covered for him, told his wife he was at my place when he was with her, maybe he’d still be alive.”

“Crazy like how?” Ray asked.

“Possessive. She’d check up on him--like if he said he was going to be at work, she’d drive by and look for his car. And once when he took Laura out for their anniversary, when he got back to the car, there was a picture of him and Stephanie under the windshield wiper. Luckily, she was waiting back at the restaurant while he got the car, but--”

“Stephanie is his girlfriend?” Ray interrupted.

“Yeah. Yeah, Stephanie Baker.” He shook his head. “Another time, they broke up for a couple of days--Bill decided he was going to spend more time with Laura, try to patch things up, you know. She started wrecking the presents he gave her and sending them back to him--cut up stuffed animals, smashed vases, stuff like that. Luckily, he never gave her his home address, so she sent them to his office. I guess the sex was good or something, because she was just not stable.” “Do you know her address, or where she works?” Fraser asked.

“Not her address, but Bill did mention once what neighborhood she lived in.” Barone turned to his computer. “I think it was in an email--let me see if I can find it.”

After a few minutes of searching, Barone managed to find part of he girlfriend’s address. A call to the station turned the part of an address into a whole address, and they were on their way.

That was where the hit a temporary dead end. After they’d pounded on her door for about a minute, an old lady came out of the house next door and said, “She’s at work.”

Fraser tipped his hat and said, “Thank you, ma’am. Do you happen to know where Miss Baker works?”

“She does something with computers,” the old lady said helpfully.

Big help. Ray had no idea how many computer firms there were in Chicago, and the suspect didn’t necessarily even work for one of them. “Something with computers” could just mean she used one at work--by that definition, _Frannie_ did “something with computers.”

“Is she in any trouble?” The old lady asked, sounding like maybe she hoped her neighbor was.

“She may have some information that will assist with a current investigation,” Ray answered.

“If you see her,” Fraser added, “please don’t mention that we were here. We’ll come back this evening.”

“She usually gets back about six, unless she’s seeing her man friend.” The old lady leaned over her porch railing. “I know it’s normal for unmarried girls to have their men friends stay over these days, but hers is _married_. I saw his ring.”

“Ah,” Fraser said. “Thank you, Mrs--”

“Henley,” she finished.

“Mrs. Henley.”

Since they couldn’t do anything more on this case until six, Fraser decided to spend the afternoon at the Consulate. For a change, Ray didn’t argue with him. Fraser had to do his own job _sometimes_ , and anyway, Ray wanted to go to the library and see what they had about otters.

#

Ray arrived at the Consulate promptly at five, holding two large carryout bags. “You done with work? I brought us some dinner.”

“That’s very kind of you, Ray,” Fraser answered. The bags were marked with Japanese characters--not one of Ray’s usual places. “Let’s eat in the kitchen,” he suggested.

Fraser made a pot of jasmine tea while Ray set out the food he’d brought. _Definitely_ not any of Ray’s usuals. He’d brought a wide variety of shellfish--crabs, clams, sea urchins, and more mussels--as well as some rice and sushi. Apart from the rice, all were things that made up the natural diet of a sea otter. Fraser looked at Ray, raising his eyebrows.

“What? I like seafood,” Ray said defensively.

“Of course, Ray.”

Once the tea was ready, they ate. Everything was very good, particularly the sea urchins--he rarely had the opportunity to eat those, otter or not. When Fraser explained that the edible portion was actually the little animal’s sex organs, Ray generously gave Fraser his share.

Over the meal, they planned how they’d approach the interview with Griffen’s girlfriend. “I might recognize her scent, if she is the killer,” Fraser said. “But I might not.”

“Well, give me a sign if you know it’s her. Too bad we can’t use it in court, but at least we’ll know where to lean.”

Ray had ordered so much food that by the time they’d eaten their fill, and Diefenbaker had had several choice tidbits, there was still enough for another meal or two. When Fraser pointed this out, Ray answered, “You can save it for when you’re an otter.”

“It is the full moon tonight,” Fraser agreed.

“I know.” Ray grinned. “I looked.”

After putting the leftovers away, they left for Miss Baker’s residence. Diefenbaker, miffed that he hadn’t been given an equal share of Ray’s dinner, responded to Fraser’s “Coming?” by pointedly turning his back and sitting with his tail curled around his paws.

“Suit yourself,” Fraser told him. “We’ll be back later.”

When they neared Miss Baker’s residence, Fraser saw that this time, the lights were on in the front room. A good, though not 100% reliable, indicator that someone was at home.

Miss Baker opened the door. When Ray introduced them, showing his badge, she nodded crisply and said, “You had better come in.” She didn’t seem particularly surprised to see them--but then, her lover had been murdered. She had to expect a visit from the police.

But if she knew she was a suspect, she gave no evidence of that knowledge, inviting them to sit down and offering coffee.

This time, Ray said, “Sure. Why don’t I help you?”

Miss Baker was, Fraser noticed, an unusually attractive woman, but he hoped that Ray was interested in keeping her in sight for official, not personal, reasons. If Ray’s offer threw the proverbial monkey wrench into any plans she might have had to disappear out the back door, she didn’t show that, either. “Thank you, Detective,” was all she said, her polite smile revealing two white teeth and one dimple.

Fraser took advantage of their absence to mentally compare Miss Baker’s scent to that of the crime scene. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be sure if they matched or not. Her scent was definitely familiar, but it could simply be that she used a popular brand of soap.

Shortly after he came to this conclusion, he heard a sickening _thud_ from the kitchen, rather as if Miss Baker had dropped a very ripe winter squash from a height. Before he’d had time to consider the significance of this sound, he was on his feet, heading toward the kitchen.

Miss Baker met him in the entryway. “Sorry! I just dropped a--” Before saying what she’d dropped, she raised the large frying pan she was carrying and struck him across the head with it.

Fraser dropped like a stone.

#

When he came around, it was dark, and he and Ray were tied back to back. At least, he thought it was Ray. “Ray?” he asked, experimentally.

“Yeah?” Ray said.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. My head hurts,” he added.

“Mine too.”

“So, uh, I think the girlfriend did it.”

“I had come to that conclusion,” Fraser admitted.

Ray shifted against his back. “Shit! My gun’s gone.”

“That’s unfortunate.” As Fraser’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he came to the conclusion that they were in a basement storage area. Unfortunately, the area was being used to store potting soil, plastic plant pots, and little else. Fraser didn’t see anything that could be used as a weapon, or a sharp edge that they could use to cut their bonds. Ray, when asked, said that he couldn’t, either.

“So do, you know, the thing,” Ray suggested.

“What thing?”

“Turn into an otter, dummy. You can climb up those shelves and go out that broken window,” he explained, moving his head to the left. By craning his neck over his shoulder, Fraser was able to see a small window set near the ceiling. “Then go to the car, turn back into a human, and call for help.”

Fraser’s initial impulse was to say that he couldn’t possibly do that--but on reflection, he realized there was no reason he couldn’t, except an ingrained habit of not turning into an otter in front of witnesses. But Ray already knew, and if Miss Baker saw him, she’d be unlikely to connect the small animal scampering through her yard with the prisoners she’d tied up in her basement. “Otters are not particularly good at climbing.”

“Okay, so you’ll bite through the ropes and I’ll give you a boost.”

Fraser considered that, and was unable to find fault. “All right.” Another glance at the window demonstrated that the full moon was visible through it. That would make this fairly easy. “I’ll try not to scratch you.” He knew from experience that an otter tangled up in clothing was prone to panic, and he didn’t imagine that being tied to another person would improve the experience.

“Thanks, Frase, you’re a pal.”

Fraser ignored the sarcasm and answered, “As are you.”

#

Ray found out pretty quick what Fraser meant by that remark about scratching him, when he had a small--well, actually, kind of a large--a _large_ furry animal tied to his back. Fraser squirmed around back there, eventually getting himself turned around and climbing out the neck of his uniform, over Ray’s shoulder, and down his chest. Once Fraser was out, the ropes that had bound them together went slack, but his hands and ankles were still tied. He held his hands out for Fraser to chew through the ropes.

Fraser decided instead to rub his head against Ray’s hands, like a cat that wanted to be petted. “Yeah, Frase, that’s real cute, but can you get with the biting?”

Fraser chirped and gnawed delicately through the ropes, stopping several times to spit out fibers. Once he was done with that, Ray untied his own feet and untangled himself from the ropes holding Fraser’s clothes to his back. “Okay, up and over,” he said, picking up Fraser and heaving him toward the window. “Careful of the glass.” Fraser chirped again and squeezed through the window, pushing off on Ray’s hands with his hind feet.

Fraser’s claws left a long, shallow gash on his wrist. Ray pressed it again his shirt to stop the bleeding, and went to examine their prison.

There was a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling, with about two inches of pull chain attached. Ray could barely reach it, and when he did, the bulb turned out to be dead. No help there.

He’d already seen that there was nothing in the room that would make a good weapon. He supposed if Liz Baker came back before Fraser did, he could throw a handful of dirt in her face--which wouldn’t be a whole lot of help if she had his gun, but was maybe better than nothing.

The door was the next thing to examine. Baker had clearly done some dumb things--killing her boyfriend, for one, and tying up two cops in her basement, for another--but leaving the basement door unlocked wasn’t one of them. The house was an old one, with the basement divided into several rooms, and the door was a heavy one. Ray threw himself against it anyway, and it opened--about half an inch. The light was on in the outer room--Ray could see a sliver of a hot water heater, and part of an old bicycle. Also in his field of vision was the two-by-four Baker had put across the door.

Great.

He was looking around the room for something he could use to pry the bar up when Fraser came back through the window. He chirped and chattered at Ray, as if fully expecting him to understand everything he said.

“You have to turn back into a human, Frase. I don’t speak otter.”

Fraser squeaked indignantly.

“Oh, right.” Ray turned his back on Fraser and his clothes.

A moment later, Fraser reported, “Your car’s gone.”

Ray turned. “ _What_?”

“Miss Baker appears to have taken the precaution of removing your car,” Fraser elaborated, buttoning up his pants.

“Shit! We’ve got to get out of here, Frase. My car! She could be doing anything to it!”

“Yes, and the circumstances do rather suggest that we could be in danger ourselves,” Fraser added, sounding very Canadian. Dry, he’d probably call it. “Miss Baker will doubtless realize that assaulting and imprisoning two officers of the law only compounds her difficulties, and, having killed once, she may decide to do so again.”

“Yeah, yeah, that too.”

“How do you suggest we make our escape? I can hardly knock on a neighbor’s door and ask to use the phone, either as an otter or a nude human.”

Ray had to admit that wouldn’t be a particularly good idea. “Can you get back into the rest of the house, as an otter?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t see any more broken windows.”

Ray looked up at the window. “I’m not going to fit through that, even if we take out the rest of the glass.”

“No,” Fraser agreed. “We have to get out of here somehow, before Miss Baker returns. We may not have much time.”

“Let’s see what we can do over here,” Ray suggested, showing him the door.

They could each fit part of a finger through the gap, but not enough to do more than poke at the two-by-four. “Look for something we can pry it up with,” Fraser suggested. “Something long and thin, like a screwdriver.”

It was a perfectly good suggestion, except that there wasn’t a screwdriver. The dirt was obviously no help, and the only thing left was some pieces of rope and the plastic pots. “Maybe we can get the rope around it somehow, and…I got nothing.”

Fraser picked up one of the plastic pots. “Perhaps if we break it….”

The pots were the cheap, flimsy kind that plants came in. They were pretty easy to crush and tear into strips that would fit through the gap, but when they pushed at the two-by-four with pot fragments, the fragments just bent.

“There is one more idea,” Ray said slowly. He didn’t _want_ to do it this way. He wanted to convince Fraser to do it so they could be together, not so that some murdering psycho didn’t murder them. But they did have to escape, before the murdering psycho did something evil to his car.

“What, Ray?”

“I could fit through the window, if I was an otter too.”

Fraser’s face fell. “I can’t do that, Ray.”

“Sure you can.” He showed Fraser his wrist. “Look. That’ll make it real easy, won’t it?”

“I wasn’t referring to the practical aspects.”

“I know. But--look, it’ll be all right. We’ll have some good times together.”

Fraser got what he was saying, Ray was sure of it. His eyes kind of went off to the side, like he was seeing what it could be like. But after a minute, he shook himself like a wet dog and said, “I can’t.”

Ray knew what would convince him. “Okay. Then you turn into an otter, and go.”

“Ray, I might not be able to get help before she returns. If I stay, it’ll be two against one; we can--”

“She has a gun--at least one, mine, and maybe the one she killed Griffen with, too-and we have dirt. I don’t think two against one is going to be a big help.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Okay, then,” Ray said, looking over at the window. “Look at it this way--if we don’t, we’re toast.”

Fraser looked at the window, and at Ray’s hand. “This is--permanent, you know.”

“I kinda figured.”

“It can be very inconvenient, especially in the city.”

“We’ll go camping.”

“Every month?”

“Sure, why not?” Money, weather, and work were three very good reasons, but Ray figured they could sort that out later. When the possibility of being murdered at any second wasn’t quite so, uh, possible.

Fraser glanced at the window again. “All right. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“You might want to, ah….”

“Disrobe?”

“Yes.”

Reminding himself that he _had_ seen Fraser naked twice that day, so it was only fair, he stripped off. Fraser averted his eyes, and Ray decided that it was probably good, all things considered, that the basement was kinda chilly. At the very least, Fraser would get a nice surprise later.

“All right then,” Fraser said, once Ray was naked. “This is the last chance to change your mind.”

“Go on, otterfy me.”

Very delicately, Fraser licked his hand.

Ray realized that he’d been expecting it to hurt, even though Fraser had said it didn’t. It wasn’t anything like what he thought being squished into a different, much smaller shape would feel like--which, if he’d had to guess, he would have figured would _feel_ like a really bad car crash _sounded_.

Instead, it was sort of like being turned into a liquid and poured into a glass that was a different shape from the one he’d been in before.

Another surprise was that he could understand what Fraser was saying. “You make a beautiful otter, Ray.”

Unfortunately, Ray couldn’t answer except with some random chirping. He wondered if the different chirps meant different things. He’d have to ask Fraser.

“All right, I’m going to pick you up.”

Despite the warning, being picked up by his furry shoulders was a little bit of a shock. For one thing, he hadn’t been small enough for anyone to pick up since he was six. But he remembered what to do pretty quickly--maybe being picked up was like riding a bicycle. He snuggled up against Fraser’s chest and put his paws around his neck.

“Here you go,” Fraser said, putting him out the window. “I’ll be up in a moment.”

Ray-the-otter watched to see how Fraser was going to manage that. He took off his clothes and climbed up the shelves, still human. Crouched naked on top of the rickety shelves, he turned into an otter just in time to scramble out the window before the shelves fell down behind him.

Ray sniffed at Fraser, making sure he was okay. Chirping, Fraser turned onto his back, allowing Ray to inspect his furry underside. Satisfied that his friend was okay, Ray tried some walking. It took him a little while to get the hang of it--his back legs were very short, and his feet felt like he had clown shoes on.

Once he was done experimenting, Fraser chirped and started running across the yard. Ray followed him, realizing that while he was trying to walk, he’d forgotten all about the perilous situation they were in. He’d have to watch for that.

But Fraser looked really funny, running. Sort of like when a little kid made a toy animal “run” by bouncing it up and down. Ray would make fun of him, except he was probably doing the same thing.

When they got to the sidewalk, Fraser carefully looked up and down the street. Ray squealed and jumped behind him as a car rushed by. Lunatics! Didn’t they realize there were small, dark-colored animals trying to cross the street?

Ray thought about how many streets there were between here and either the Consulate, his apartment, or the station. There was no way they could make it all that way without becoming road kill. He squeaked and covered his eyes with his paws.

Fraser chirped at him, gesturing toward the street with his nose. Ray shook his head, and Fraser combed through his whiskers with one front paw, then chirped again.

Ray shook his head again. No way was he going into the street to be turned into road pizza.

Fraser chirped at him for a while. There weren’t any words--at least, not any that Ray could understand--but he knew from the tone that Fraser was explaining why it would be perfectly all right to cross the street.

When he finished, Ray chirped back and shook his head again.

Fraser scratched his chin with one paw, then looked around, turning in a circle. About halfway through it looked like he got distracted, and he started chasing his tail. But after he’d gone around three or four times, he went back to looking, and then took off across the yard.

Since he wasn’t going in the street, Ray followed him.

Fraser bounded up to the back porch of the house next door, and scratched at the back door.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ray demanded--or tried to. What came out was chirping.

Fraser chirped back, and scratched at the door some more.

After another minute or so, the old lady--Mrs. Henley--opened the door. “Hello?” she said, looking out over their heads. Fraser chirped, and she looked down. “What are you, now? Doggies?”

They didn’t look much like doggies, but maybe Mrs. Henley had bad eyes or something. Ray tried to wag his tail, but it didn’t seem to work too well.

“You’d better come in,” she said, opening the door further. “Let me get a good look at you.”

They scampered inside, paws slipping on the linoleum.

Mrs. Henley bent to examine Fraser’s neck. “No collars. Well, you can stay the night, but you’ll have to go to the animal shelter in the morning. I’m sure someone’s looking for you.”

#

After feeding them some leftover chicken--fairly tasty, but not as nice as Ray’s mussels--Mrs. Henley put them in the garage with an old blanket and a bowl of water. The garage had a small window on each side, and the one on the right let through just enough moonlight to see by.

Ray, with a bellyful of chicken, rolled himself up in the blanket and got ready to go to sleep. Fraser admired him for a moment--he really was a lovely otter--before changing. “Ray,” he said. “Ray. I’m taking the blanket.”

Ray chirped at him as he took away the blanket and wrapped it around himself, toga-fashion. “Can you transform back?”

Ray’s eyes narrowed and his whiskers drew together in concentration. After a moment, the furry face smoothed out and he chittered anxiously.

“Don’t worry--you’ll turn back in the morning. It’s difficult to control it at first.” Fraser rolled up the overhead door. “All right, let’s go.” Now, if Ray refused to accompany him, Fraser could simply pick him up and carry him.

But this time, Ray followed, chirping and squeaking at him.

“All we need to do,” Fraser explained, “is locate a public telephone and call the station.” He had no idea which direction was likeliest to yield a pay phone, but decided to head off toward the station.

Chicagoans, Fraser reflected--not for the first time--were very strange. Out of all the cars that passed beside them, a number of car horns blared, and one driver even leaned out of the window to yell something unintelligible at him, but no one stopped to help, or even to inquire as to what had happened to his clothing and why he had an otter.

By the time they reached the liquor store, Fraser had stubbed several toes, and Ray had decided that he was too tired to walk. He was awkward to carry against Fraser’s shoulder, but his limbs were too short to hold on to Fraser’s back. Ray’s efforts to find a comfortable position had left long scratches on Fraser’s bare chest and arms.

Stumbling into the store, Fraser said, “Phone?”

The clerk, apparently unsurprised to see a man wearing a flowered sheet and carrying an otter, pointed toward the back corner of the store.

“Thank you kindly.”

It took Fraser some time to convince the 911 operator that he wasn’t a prank caller, but eventually he was put through to Lieutenant Welsh, and not long after, the marked squad cars came roaring up the street.

#

Ray smelled coffee. Coffee and--oatmeal?

He pried one eye open and took a quick look around before burrowing back under the blanket. He was in Fraser’s office, on the cot, with the wolf on his legs.

“Good morning, Ray!” Fraser said cheerfully.

Ray grunted.

“I’ll just put this here.” The coffee smell came closer.

After a moment, Ray extended one hand out from under the blanket and felt around until he found the coffee cup, and then brought it under the blanket with the rest of him. “My head hurts.” He made an inventory of the rest of his body and added, “My everything hurts.”

“Yes,” Fraser said. “That happens, the first time.”

Slowly, the events of the night before came back to him. He’d been whacked with a frying pan by a killer, tied up in a basement, turned into an otter, escaped, hid in a garage….

It wasn’t the first time for any of that, except the otter thing. He sipped at his coffee. Lots of sugar. Good. “So, uh. Otters.”

“Yes, Ray.” Fraser sighed. “I’m sorry. But you did insist.”

Waking up a little more, Ray remembered that Fraser hadn’t _wanted_ to turn him into an otter. “No, it’s good. I mean, we didn’t really get to do anything fun, but there’s later.”

“Ray.”

Ray sipped at his coffee again.

“Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray.”

Ray sat up and pulled the blanket off of his head. “What?”

“You understand that this is forever.”

Ray smiled lazily up at him. “Yeah, I know. Great, huh?” Fraser licking his scratched hand while they were tied up in a basement wasn’t exactly romantic, but it was still a sort of a marriage. They were the only two were-otters in the greater Chicago area. They were meant for each other.

“I meant the--as you put it--otter thing.”

“That, too.” Fraser still had that _look_ , like he’d done something awful to Ray and was just waiting for Ray to figure it out. But Ray wasn’t worried--he’d show him. He accepted a bowl of oatmeal, and frowned down at it. “We ate all the seafood?”

“You did, yes.”

“Whoops. Sorry.”

“We’ll get some more for next time.”

Ray finished his coffee and oatmeal and got dressed. He thought he’d have to borrow some of Fraser’s clothes, but Fraser had managed to get his own out of the crazy lady’s basement. Buckling on his empty shoulder holster, he said, “So, today we go shake Baker to find out where she left my car, right?” He vaguely recalled some uniformed officers Mirandizing the killer and stuffing her in the back of a marked car, although at the time he’d been more interested in chasing their shiny, shiny shoes.

“Actually, the other officers were able to recover your car. It’s in the lot at the station--unharmed,” Fraser added.

“Oh, good.”

“But Lieutenant Welsh is most anxious to see us, as soon as you’re ready.”

That was a conversation Ray didn’t think he’d ever be ready for, but he was human, dressed, and coffee’d, so there wasn’t any excuse to put it off.

Fraser was all for walking to the station, but Ray insisted on taking a cab. He’d had plenty of walking last night--and he’d have thought Fraser did, too.

“What are you laughing at?” Fraser asked as they got into the back of the taxi.

“You, in a sheet with pink and orange flowers on it.”

“You were naked,” Fraser pointed out.

“I was furry.”

The cab driver turned around to look at them.

“27th precinct,” Ray told him. “And watch the road.”

Ray had kind of hoped that the Lieu would be too busy to see them right away, so he’d have a chance to find out from the grapevine exactly which bits of last night’s weirdness Welsh knew about and come up with some kind of explanation. But no such luck.

“You’ll be glad to know,” Welsh said as soon as the office door closed behind them, “that Miss Baker has confessed fully to the murder of Bill Griffen.”

“Oh,” Ray said. “Great.”

Welsh leaned back in his desk chair and looked at them for a moment long enough to give Ray plenty of time to imagine exactly how badly this could go. “Do I even want to know why you two managed to escape from her basement, but your clothes didn’t?”

Ray didn’t have to think long about that. “No.”

“Definitely not,” Fraser added.

“Or where Vecchio was when your backup arrived?”

“No,” Ray repeated. That, in fact, had to be the thing Welsh _least_ wanted to know about the whole incident. He had been right there, just…furry.

“He was…around,” Fraser said.

Welsh studied the case file on his desk, then closed it decisively. “All in all, I think it’s a good thing that Miss Baker won’t be attempting to mount a defense.”

Ray had to agree.

#

 _One month later_

By the time Fraser finished pitching the tent, the sun was setting and the moon rising. With a warning to Diefenbaker, he opened the plastic cooler Ray had filled with selections from the fish market and the Japanese restaurant. “These are ours. The beef heart and lamb kidneys are yours.”

Dief complained, even though he had nothing to complain about. He liked mammal organs more than shellfish anyway.

Ray, who had been exploring around the lake shore, came back to the campsite. “It’s about time, huh?” he asked, picking up a shrimp.

“Yes,” Fraser agreed, pulling him in for a kiss. There were all sorts of fun things they could do once they changed, but kissing wasn’t one of them. Otters simply weren’t built for it.

“Mmph,” Ray said when the kiss ended. “Admit it. This was a great idea.”

“It was a great idea,” Fraser repeated obediently. He wasn’t sure which Ray meant--the camping, the kissing, or their relationship--but he was happy enough to agree to any of them.

Ray ate another shrimp and started unbuttoning his shirt. “It’ll be even more fun when I can change on my own.”

Ah, so that was what he meant. Ray had been trying all month to turn back into an otter, but all he’d managed was an impressive series of facial contortions. Fraser had tried to explain that these weren’t necessary, but since he couldn’t put into words exactly what was necessary, Ray had remained unconvinced that making faces wouldn’t somehow help.

His shirt off, Ray paused to ruffle Dief’s ears. “No eating us, okay?”

“He knows,” Fraser said.

“Will he play with us?”

“Yes. He doesn’t swim, though.”

Diefenbaker woofed, and Fraser corrected himself, “He _can_ swim, but he doesn’t particularly care for it.”

Ray finished undressing. He was a lovely otter, and a lovely man, too. Sleek and blond and playful. Feeling Fraser’s eyes on him, he looked over his shoulder and met his gaze, grinning.

Fraser licked his lip. “If you weren’t about to turn into an otter--”

“I know.” Ray glanced down at his front. “In the morning, okay?”

“Yes.”

The moonlight touched him, and he changed.

Fraser quickly cast off his clothing and followed suit. A moment later, two dark, sleekly-furred shapes slid into the moonlit pond, together.

 

END


End file.
